Open Letter to Industry Leaders and Policy Makers

Children are facing a strange new world in response to COVID-19, with schools closing, fewer services available, and a tremendous increase in unregulated screen time and online access. Children were already suffering from too little support, as evidenced by 60% of 8- to 12-year-olds across 30 countries reporting at least one cyber-risk in the past year. The risks are varied, including cyber-bullying and victimization, risky meetings, gaming addiction, privacy problems, and risky content, and false news. These risks can lead to serious outcomes, such as poorer social adjustment, poor school performance, and poor health.

We have been working on solutions to help children become digitally resilient, but many of these solutions used existing platforms such as school systems and teachers to help guide and teach children. With schools closing in response to COVID-19, the risks will increase and the opportunities to train and support children have decreased. We know from decades of research with children and adolescents that the number one predictor of risks (such as cyber-bullying and gaming disorder) is access, and children’s access has just increased dramatically.

We need an immediate response to help children gain in digital citizenship, not pretending that we can keep children from every possible risk, but by giving them the tools to be able to respond, adapt, and grow. We need both novel and traditional methods for delivering digital citizenship training.

Luckily, DQ Institute has been developing global standards digital citizenship tools to help children become smart, responsible, and future-ready digital citizen who can minimize cyber-risks and maximize their digital potentials. We have tools. We need your help to get them to children quickly, while this window of opportunity is open and before children have settled into a “new normal” where they uncritically consume as much media as possible.

We are looking for partners, both to help fund a fast and broad roll-out of the Child Digital Readiness Kit and to help distribute it through global partner networks.

By using 1-2 hours per day of their new free time over 8 days with our engaging educational content, children will become better able to use technology wisely with critical thinking in the rest of their free time. By practicing with our e-learning solution, they will become better able to adapt to changes in education and, ultimately, the workforce. Moreover, we support nations by monitoring their national level of children’s digital readiness and online safety through Child Online Safety Index.

Please join us to use the opportunities offered by this crisis to grow a wiser, healthier and more resilient generation of children.

Thank you.

Yuhyun Park PhD is the founder of DQ Institute

Douglas Gentile PhD is the Chair of Research Committee, DQ Institute, and Professor at Iowa State University

The fund will enable us to:

• Create awareness and keep children safe online
• Give children free access to our 8-Day DQ World education program to learn digital citizenship
• Give parents a chance to make their family more digitally ready with parenting resources and reports to help them improve their child’s DQ at home
• Give teachers the tools and resources to work with their students remotely
• Acknowledge and monitor the impact of DQ to further enhance the Child Online Safety Index

Child Digital Readiness Kit

8-Day Home-Based E-Learning for Children (Ages 8-12) and Parents